1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and system for improving the efficiency of an environment established within a data processing system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for improving the efficiency of an environment established in a data processing system by reducing the initialization time required for the environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In large software systems and environments located within a data processing system, performance may be hampered due to various factors. For example, in object-oriented software systems and environments, general performance problems may be attributed to the dynamic nature of object-oriented programming and to some extent, to specific implementations of the methodology and/or the run time environment. In a production environment (i.e., an environment where an end user object-oriented system is installed and operating on a day-to-day basis), one specific aspect of the performance problem tends to be the time required to instantiate and initialize objects and their associated classes upon entry into the object-oriented environment. For example, each time the environment is started or invoked some amount of initialization is required in order to perform some function for a user. A large part of this initialization is simply instantiating and initializing objects and their associated classes that are going to be utilized continuously and have some initial or default values. The environment may be started for various purposes, such as a single user session, a communication session, or some batch processing session. In each case, the object-oriented environment must be initialized.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and system for reducing the time necessary to provide a data processing environment for a particular task.